Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2025

[Cheryl Gervais]

Absolutely.

When you talk about bail reform and incidents involving drugs and things of that nature, obviously, our service is very well versed in responding to high-crime severity calls for service. When it comes to specialty units, we do have positions in place, but again, one-time funding, not sustainable funding, and again, pulled from our front line, which is challenging for us when our communities expect visibility and presence in our community. That definitely came through in our operational review. In the conversations we're having in the community, the expectation is much different on an indigenous police service than a municipal police service. Our communities actually want to see a police cruiser every day.

When it comes to fulfilling these positions in our street crime unit and our drug units, we have a civilian offender management unit of one person covering our 22 communities. Those are the challenges put on us in trying to address the issues around drugs.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

That's probably my time.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

We'll now go to Brendan for six minutes, please.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here.

Georgina, I'm going to concentrate on you.

First of all, you didn't get to finish your five minutes. Are there some essentials you wanted to convey quickly? I do have a few other questions for you, but if there are any key points in terms of your recommendations, go ahead, and of course we'll take the written one as well.

[Georgina Nagano]

Thank you, MP Hanley.

I've worked inside the RCMP and alongside nations for over four decades. That's 40 years. I've aged myself. I know what policing can and can't do. Enforcement alone will never build safety in our indigenous communities. Safety is built through relationships, prevention and accountability to one another. We cannot police our way out of trauma.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you. That's excellent to hear.

You talk about data sovereignty. It reminds me of one story you related. It was about the impact when, after a year or so of the CSO program being instituted at Kwanlin Dün, the number of calls to police went down quite dramatically. Can you briefly recount that?

[Georgina Nagano]

Yes.

When we started doing the community safety work in Kwanlin Dün First Nation, one of the things we did look at was the data, which is the number of police calls over the past year. In 2015, the former chief, Doris Bill, had asked us how many calls to police services we had to that community. It was a community of 300 homes, with 500 individuals living there and access to 24-7 policing, 365 days a year, all the resources, three FNIPP positions. There were 1,076 calls, which meant every person made two phone calls to the police every day. There were high rates of crime: domestic assault, sexual violence, break and enters, etc.

We started working with the community and the community safety officer program, and the next year former Chief Bill said, “Gina, can you ask the RCMP how many calls of services we got to the community in 2016 after we started working there?” Inspector Thompson said, “It's 666.” I said, “No, Archie. I need it for the whole year.” He said, “It's 666 calls.” We dropped the number of police calls by 40% in one year.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Have you been able to access ongoing data to establish whether that has continued? How are you measuring success?

[Georgina Nagano]

I'm going to ask my colleague to answer that question. She has done the analysis side of it.

[Una Gair, Chief Operations Officer, House of Wolf and Associates Inc.]

It is a consistent challenge for nations to access uniform crime reporting data, which is disaggregated, anonymized data from the RCMP around criminal offences within their communities, as well as outcomes of criminal offences in the communities. It is an ongoing issue that hamstrings nations' attempts to evaluate their own programs and the impacts of their programs. This has been an ongoing challenge, and one we have raised time and time again at multiple tables.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thanks. That's great to know.

I think a lot of the success is more on the anecdotal side and, even so, quite dramatic certainly from many of the stories that we hear.

Gina, you've been very direct in your recommendations, and that's appreciated. You haven't talked much about your own work with House of Wolf and how you work with communities. Maybe you could briefly describe the community survey that you carry out and how that might influence the development, or not, of a CSO program and how that might vary with different communities.

[Georgina Nagano]

Thank you, MP Hanley.

Again, I'm going to ask my colleague to answer that.

[Una Gair]

We engage in a process called community-based participatory research, which is a mixed-method process of engaging with the community, making sure that we cover about 20% of the people who live within that community and engaging them in various forms. We'll do small group engagements followed by in-depth, one-to-one qualitative interviews to continue exploring themes. In small communities it can often be hard to raise things publicly, but when they work with us privately, a lot of things might come out.

We do that specifically so that we can help them identify stable dynamic patterns of risk and maladapted behaviour within their communities and design programs within that community.

We're probably best known for community safety officers and guardians, but it is a web of programs that nations generally action simultaneously to start upriver of the challenges that you're seeing and the challenges that we're all trying to address. The CSOs are one component.

One of the pieces I really want to highlight, which I know is peripherally related to your question, MP Hanley, so, again, thank you for raising it, is that the current FNIPP has a binary. Nations have an option of engaging in a CTA, a community tripartite agreement, with the RCMP or police of jurisdiction when deeming their own police force, and that is a very restrictive binary. For a lot of nations that are geographically remote and have small communities that might not have the economic means to enact their own police force, it's impossible. It's a de facto single option.

[Georgina Nagano]

I think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Nagano and Ms. Gair, and congratulations on your initiative.

I saw on your website that your organization was awarded the 2021 Arctic Inspiration Prize. I also noticed that, at the time, Dr. Henley collaborated on the initiative that obviously made a difference and had a significant impact on your community.

In your opinion, are the current federal, provincial and territorial funding mechanisms sufficient to support indigenous-led community safety programs and services like yours?

Can you give us some examples of things that should be happening but aren't because there's not enough funding?

Lastly, can you explain how targeted support could strengthen self-determination initiatives in policing?

[Georgina Nagano]

Funding mechanisms are challenging. The first nations governments that we work with fund the community safety officer programs up front. Part of it is that it becomes an ownership; they own the program. The federal or territorial government doesn't, and the success of the program is that they own the program up front.

However, they have to dive into their own funding dollars to fund these programs, which makes it very challenging, so support for funding is ongoing. The gaps that we find, the funding gaps to ensure these programs continue...there is no sustainable funding. That's why we're here: to try to acknowledge that we do need sustainable funding for the program that really works.

If there were another stream.... There are three streams, and one stream is the RCMP doing the enforcement. You have the first nations and Inuit policing program that does the enforcement. We don't have the stream that allows for the community to take care of itself under a community safety officer program or a community safety guardian program where they can actually work from a holistic approach.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

On your website, you also establish a link between the impact of western funding on economic development and the impact of that same funding on communities.

I'd like to hear more about that, because I think it's important to understand that targeted funding doesn't always produce the desired results and sometimes leads to inequities that have consequences, particularly in indigenous communities.

[Georgina Nagano]

One of the things I've done is I've worked on my master's in community economic development. A lot of the background I have is in economic development as well, after leaving the police force. I came up with a diagram called the “indigenous economic gap.” Here we are, where we have trauma and crisis in our indigenous community based on colonization and so on, and on the other side we have the economy, where some communities are wealthy. The problem is that our people are too unhealthy to come over to the other side.

The Kwanlin Dün community 20 years later has made it to the other side. The entire community is thriving in economic prosperity. What you need at the end of the day is indigenous economic sustainability so that the community can starting carrying its own. They're ready. It's like this: If you had trauma, and we put safety as the foundation, then you can start taking the steps to go to school, get a job, etc., and be part of the community. That's what we have done for the entire community to shift to economic prosperity.

This community of Kwanlin Dün is functioning. They're one of the wealthiest communities we have in Yukon now. People come home to work in their community. They thrive in their community. They have the lowest social assistance—they used to have the highest—in Yukon. They're probably down to zero. They have the highest employment rate. Their people are coming home to work for their own government.

Access to education, training and all of that comes together by placing safety as the foundation. That's what we do. You can thrive as an autonomous, self-sustainable community.

Thank you.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

You have just one minute or so.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

That's perfect.

Ms. Nagano, your program is similar to what we do a lot in Val-d'Or with joint policing. I would like to know more about collaboration with the RCMP.

Are there ongoing challenges?

Is trust developing?

What concrete measures do you think the federal government could put in place to improve collaboration while respecting the autonomy of indigenous communities?

[Georgina Nagano]

I'd ask my colleague to answer that, please.

[Una Gair]

There's a long-standing history between indigenous people and the RCMP or policing as agents of the Crown and the state. It's a very fractured relationship. Kwanlin Dün is an interesting case example. It's the longest-standing program that we were involved in. It's probably why we keep talking about it. They also commissioned an evaluation report that I would encourage you to read. It's not ours to share, but I believe they would be happy to talk about the success of that program.

One of the challenges was that even in a well-policed and well-resourced area, people were not contacting the police. People were not accessing those justice services. There was a fundamental fear around what would happen when the RCMP would show up. The beauty of this intermediary program....

Again, it's very different in every community. We have two elders in Teslin who are doing this work. They work as a bridge between formal justice and the community as advocates and guides and witnesses to how they're treated, to what happens after and to the aftercare that wraps around them. I think it's—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

That brings us a little bit over the time.